Earlier I wrote about the idea that new Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, who has a reputation for being ultra-conservative in his years as a congressman, could attract Republican voters who aren’t on board with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

While McCain has been the presumptive nominee since March 4, when he earned the necessary number of delegates to clinch the bid and rival Mike Huckabee withdrew from the race, a recent post on Daily Kos shows that McCain hasn’t cracked 80% of the vote in any contest since:

Here’s a brief summary. First column is total votes in thousands; each candidate’s column gives his percentage.

Votes      (1000’s)   McCain  Huckabee  Paul  Romney  Keyes  No Pref.
PA 4/22    790.0            73             11            16              –            –          –
NC 5/6       517.0            74              12            7              –             3           4
IN 5/6         412.1           78              10            8               5            –          –
WV 5/13    100.8           76             10            5               ?              ?           ?

This spells general election trouble for McCain. As much as people speculate that the ongoing battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is hurting the Democratic Party in terms of party unity, things don’t look good for the Republicans even though their nomination was determined more than two months ago:

Frank Rich was among the first to pick up on the deep mistrust of McCain, particularly among religious-right voters, with about 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans going out of their way to make a statement. In Indiana, almost 20,000 voted for Mitt Romney. And in North Carolina, Huckabee and Alan Keyes combined for 76,000 votes, with Keyes picking up 13,000. Yes, Alan Keyes.

A Kos reader commented that these numbers may be the result of McCain supporters not bothering to vote since he’s already the presumptive nominee. In that case, Republican voters looking to make a point - like that McCain is not conservative enough - would be overly represented.

However, the numbers may be accurate in showing Republican dissatisfaction with McCain. If so, Barr may have an opening - and, as a result, presumptive Democratic nominee Obama may have an even bigger opening.